Galician forest areas are home to a very important natural heritage, prehistoric, historical, ethnographic and cultural that must be preserved.
When crossing the limit that separates the municipality of Pedrafita do Cebreiro with that of Triacastela, you will enter a Biosphere Reserve, figure of international protection that stands out for its great natural beauty and for the cultural and ethnographic wealth. It is an area of special landscape interest with ZEC (Special Conservation Area) and ZEPVN (Special Protection Area of Natural Values) spaces.
Triacastela hides in its mountains many secrets yet to be discovered, and other discoveries such as the Cova de Eirós.
Promote among forest owners and managers knowledge related to the presence of landscape, cultural, heritage or recreational values on their land and the implications that their actions may have on its conservation, is one of the many goals PEFC.
Reserve of the Biosfera Ribeira Sacra, Serras do Oribio and Courel
Biosphere Reserves are territories whose objective is to harmonize the conservation of biological and cultural diversity and economic and social development through the relationship of people with nature.
They are established on ecologically representative areas or of unique value, in terrestrial, coastal and marine environments, in which the integration of the human population and its activities with conservation is essential.
The Reserves are also places of experimentation and study of sustainable development that must fulfil three basic functions, the conservation of biodiversity and the ecosystems they contain, the development of local populations, and a logistics function to support research, training and communication.
The 15 of September 2021 it was declared Reserve of the Biosfera Ribeira Sacra, Serras do Oribio and Courel by the International Council of Coordination of the Program Man and the Biosphere (MaB) of the UNESCO, becoming the seventh Galician Biosphere Reserve. Thus, consolidating the recognition of the richness of our natural heritage throughout the world.
The Reserve of the Biosfera Ribeira Sacra, Serras do Oribio and Courel is the second largest in the community, since it covers a total area of 306,534.77 hectares of 23 municipalities of the provinces of Lugo and Ourense, of which, 5 of them you will go through on your way to Santiago: Triacastela, Samos, Sarria, Paradela and Portomarín.
This figure of international protection extends through the Cañones do Sil and through the Miño River and stands out for its great natural, cultural and ethnographic beauty.
The managing entity is the General Directorate of Natural Heritage, Consellería de Medio Ambiente, Territorio y Vivienda (Ministry of the Environment, Territory and Housing) Xunta de Galicia.
The territory of the Reserve encompasses a total of 9 protected areas, 6 Special Conservation Areas (ZEC), a Natural Monument, a Natural Area of Local Interest and a UNESCO Global Geopark (Montañas do Courel).
Its ecosystems include a large number of threatened habitats, as well as others considered rare or not very representative in the whole of the Atlantic Biogeographical Region. Next to natural habitats, the territory is home to semi-natural habitats of great environment value, like the chestnut woods, or the different types of agroforestry systems, which support a rich flora and fauna. Biogeographical variations have been equally decisive for the preservation in the territory of a rich cast of fungi, lichens, bryophytes, vascular plants, invertebrates and vertebrates, with many endemic, rare or endangered species in the Atlantic or Iberian context.
Castiñeira de Ramil, more than eight centuries of life
At the foot of the Camiño Francés, in the village of Ramil (Triacastela), you will be surprised to see a spectacular chestnut tree with more than 800 years of life and about 9 meters of perimeter, called Castiñeira de Ramil.
In recognition of its exceptional characteristics and history, on February 28 of 2022, its incorporation into the Galician Catalog of singular trees was published in the Diario Oficial de Galicia (Official Gazette of Galicia).
The Galician Catalog of singular trees was created in 2007 by the Galician Regional Government, in order to protect those trees or formations of any species, both native and foreign, located on publicly or privately owned land, deserving of specific protection measures in view of the exceptional characteristics of their size, dendrometry, age, rarity, historical or cultural significance, scientific interest, educational, esthetic, landscape or any other circumstance that makes it worthy of special protection.
With the addition of the Castiñeira de Ramil, there are already 20 chestnut trees that are part of the Catalog, the second most represented species in it, only behind the oaks that add up to 27.
Nowadays, a total of 182 elements are part of the Catalog, of which includes 144 specimens and 38 tree formations, belonging to 79 different species.
The Municipality of Triacastela has already processed a new request to incorporate a beautiful specimen of a centennial walnut rooted directly on the rock, located in front of the Casa da Ponte, old blacksmith shop of the 16th century, which was also an inn for pilgrims and that has recently been rehabilitated.
How much to discover! Cueva de Eirós
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Galician forest areas are home to a very important natural heritage, prehistoric, historical, ethnographic and cultural that must be preserved. The customs and social evolution of the human communities that inhabited the territory in distant times, together with the large area occupied by the mountains in Galicia, they explain the existence in the forest areas of many archaeological sites and innumerable cultural assets.
Very close to Ramil, you can find Castro de Triacastela, and the Castros de Lagares and San Andreau are located further north.
Here you can download the files (source: municipality of Triacastela):
Cova Eirós
In the Municipality of Triacastela there are different cavities generated inside calcareous bands that cross the territory, many of them known by the neighbours for years and possibly many more to discover.
The archaeo-paleontological site of Cova Eirós is located in the village of Cancelo, in the Municipality of Triacastela. The entrance to the cavity is located on the slope NNW of Mount Penedo, in the Sierra do Oribio, at 780 meters above sea level.
Source: USC
The cavity has a length of 104 meters, with an entrance 2 meters high and 3.5 meters wide at present. The entrance narrows after the first 7 meters of travel, giving way to a cat flap approximately 15 meters long. Then you access the largest room in the cave (“Sala Principal or Mamut”), with about 15 meters length, a maximum width of 6 and a maximum height of about 5 meters. The highest concentration of decorated panels have been identified in this room. On its walls there are numerous painted and engraved motifs at medium or low height. Although figures have been located in all sectors of the room.
In general, the motifs are small in size, strongly conditioned by the spaces and surfaces offered by the cavity. In terms of themes, the points or paint strokes stand out on a quantitative level; the fine engraved strokes, isolated or in groups; zoomorphs, both painted and engraved (bovids and possible cervids, equids and carnivores) many of them incomplete (partial representations of cervico-dorsal lines, hindquarters, etc.); followed by the representation of signs.
At the Cova Eirós site a small pendent was found made on a perforated canine, probably from a fox. Along with this evidence, several remains of bone industry appeared, highlighting a decorated spear recovered in the upper Paleolithic levels, while from the Middle Paleolithic numerous lithic artifacts, points and flakes in quartzite were recovered.
Cova Eirós was initially recognized as an outstanding paleontological site, due to the existence of ursid remains. At the end of the 1980s, the University of A Coruña carried out several excavation campaigns, recovering around 4,000 remains of bears, belonging to a minimum number of 43 individuals (Grandal, 1993). CovaEirós became one of the most important sites with remains of Ursusspelaeus or cave bear in the Iberian Peninsula. As of 2008, a new stage of research excavations began by the University of Santiago de Compostela.
The Cova Eirós site offers the most complete stratigraphic sequence for the study of the middle and upper Palaeolithic in Galicia. This fact allows direct comparison of the evolution of technology, livelihood strategies, of adaptation and exploitation of the territory between Neanderthals and Sapiens of the Northwest. CovaEirós becomes a place of reference for the reconstruction of the evolution of the settlement of the Eastern Mountains of Galicia and its relationship with open-air or sheltered settlements in other regions of the Northwest.
Although no human fossils have been found so far in the different stratigraphic levels, these levels correspond to the presence of Neanderthals and Sapiens, and its association with the findings of tools characteristic of each of these origins.
Due to the fragility and conservation of paintings and engravings, access is restricted to researches, specialists, or authorized personnel. The creation of a replica, physical or virtual, will be studied in order to guarantee its conservation.
In 2019 the Xunta recognized the CovaEirós of Triacastela as Bien de Interés Cultural (BIC) (Asset of Cultural Interest).
Source: GEPNAAT, Grupo de Estudos para a Prehistoria do NW Ibérico–Arqueoloxía, Antigüidade e Territorio, de la Universidad de Santiago de Compostela.
What to know?
The ovens
You might be curious to know a little more about the uses of ovens in Galicia, taking advantage of the fact that a few kilometres from the main centre of Triacastela you could observe some of them, in the villages of Cancelo, Vilarce and San Salvador. In all these cases, of private property.
Source: Concello Triacastela
After the grinding of the grain in the mills, the bread dough is made (flour, water and salt). It should settle for a few hours in the “artesa”, a big container made of wood, usually with four legs and a cover, narrower in the bottom than in the top part. After that, the dough goes to the oven, made with some slabs (“lar”) over them, a stone chamber with a vault of about 1’5-2’2m diameter lays down. A 0’5 x 0’5m little opening is left to put the dough in the oven, which was closed with a sealed slab with a mixture of cow excrements and water. Three hours later, the bread is ready, so it can be taken out the oven with a long wooden shovel.
If the oven is private, it is usually a stone enclosure with shed roof which is put against one of the facades of the house or some of the buildings around the house (for example, the shed). You can also find it inside the house.
If the oven is for the use of the community, it will be an isolated structure with gabled roof (similar to the mill), located in an accessible place for all the neighbours. In this case, every family unity has a specific number of backings assigned, every neighbour need to use their own wood and they must leave it clean after using it.
Applying some modifications, there were ovens for potters and tile makers too, in order to make mud containers and tiles, respectively.
In case you do not have the opportunity, we leave you their files so that you can download them and view the sheets of the ovens of the Municipality of Triacastela (source: municipality of Triacastela):
The geology of Triacastela is also related to other types of ovens.
The limestone, outstanding element of the geology of this territory, favored the formation of caves and fostered the tradition among pilgrims of collecting one of these stones and transporting it to Castañeda, in Arzúa, where it was burned in an oven to form the lime that sealed the stones that make up the Cathedral of Santiago, fact written in the Codex Calixtinus.
The fact that today the place where the ovens could have been located in which the mortar was made and that they were more than 40 km from Santiago, has given rise to various conjectures. It is one of the unresolved issues.
The Municipality of Triacastela has enabled a space with stones that symbolizes this history near the Town Hall. Next to it, a sculpture of a pilgrim, carved in wood. Every year for more than a decade, chainsaw professionals have participated in the Fair of Crafts and products from the Triacastela area, making wooden sculptures, mainly pine, which are later placed in different parts of the town for the enjoyment of inhabitants and visitors.
Toponyms
Toponyms are the names with which we identify the different spaces of the territory. Usually, they allude to some special characteristic of the area or to the most significant construction located there, to the use that was given to that part of the territory and to the most abundant plant species. Therefore, its study allows us to delve into our history.
The Camino de Santiago enters the Municipality of Triacastela through a place called Campo de Furco, name that refers to an old measure of lenght, o “furco”, which was equivalent to a sixth of the yardstick, and which corresponds to the maximum distance between the end of the thumb and index finger.
Biduedo is the first population nucleus you come across, and its name tells us that it is a place where birches abound.
On your trip you will cross other towns that respond to the same logic, and you will be able to observe the high number of places that, through their names, convey the importance of the mountains and the trees in that location: O CASTIÑEIRO (chestnuts), MONTE (mountain), O BIDUEDO (birches)…
The dispersion of the population nucleus, the distribution of the land in very small plots (smallholding) and the irregular orography are some of the factors that explain that in Galicia there are more than 38,000 names of population nucleus (a third of the total of Spain) and more than 2,000,000 microtoponyms.
AND TO WHAT DO WE OWE THE NAME OF TRIACASTELA??
Although the second part of the toponym Triacastela can lead us to think of the ancient presence of three castles in the territory, it is known that in latin CASTELLA is the neuter plural of CASTELLUM, derived from CASTRO, “castle, camp, castro”. Therefore, it refers to the existence of “three small castros in this territory”, whose origin is already collected in a document from the monastery of Samos from the year 922, monastery that you can visit if you continue your way through Samos.Source:https://toponimia.xunta.gal/es
Bifurcation of the Camino
At the western end of Triacastela, we are presented with two possible itineraries, through Samos or through San Xil.
The original route through Samos, longest stretch, runs along the banks of the Oribio River and will allow us to visit the Monasterio de San Xulián de Samos.
The variant through San Xil, is an itinerary that goes through lush forests and valleys criss-crossed by embedded river courses, counting with numerous enclaves of natural value, such as in the parish of Balsa. After passing Balsa, on a steep slope you can also see the Fonte dos Lameiros.
The Role of PEFC
Promote among forest owners and managers knowledge related to the presence of recreational, landscape and cultural values on their land and the implications that their actions may have on its conservation, is one of the many goals PEFC.
Galicia has an incomparable natural heritage of exceptional value. This is one of the main identity traits of our community, which needs the appropriate conservation to satisfy the needs of current and future generations.
The Galician Natural Protected Spaces Network represents 13% of the total regional surface. This network covers natural spaces that have been granted a special protection regime in accordance with different regional, national, or European regulations, as well as international agreements.
These natural spaces include the most representative and significant ecosystems of Galician land: coastal areas and estuaries, lagoons, fluvial ecosystems, inland forest ranges, groves, and pastures, etc. The regional law that regulates their protection is included in “Lei 5/2019” of 5 August 2019, of Galician natural and biodiverse heritage. Click here to view a map of Galician protected spaces.
PEFC promotes and encourages a level of understanding of the laws that affect protected spaces for landowners, with its inclusion in land management plans reflecting land identification, its cartographic registry, and its condition.
